


And I Can Fall Asleep

by Chash



Series: Charity Drive 2017 [18]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Age Swap, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 16:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10517637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: Bellamy Blake spent the first sixteen years of his life under the floor, trying to figure out what he'd do if he ever got out.When he's eighteen, he gets sent to Earth, and he never thought at all about what he'd do if that happened. But he can figure it out.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chicleeblair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicleeblair/gifts).



> Age swap is just for Octavia and Bellamy, with Bellamy being the second child, although I made him older than Octavia is in canon because I wanted to and you're not my dad.

Bellamy spends his whole life getting ready to live on the Ark. 

It feels stupid, when he lets himself think about it. He knows he isn't ever going to get that life. But it's worse to think about never leaving, about his whole world being confined to the hole in the floor, to the three small rooms his mother has, as a woman whose husband had died and left her with a daughter. He can't believe that it will be all he ever has, so he has to think he'll get out, and then he'll be part of the real world. He has to let himself get ready, because he doesn't have anything else to do.

Precedent exists. He starts reading about that as soon as he's old enough to think about it, telling his sister about what happened to other kids like him, when they were discovered. All of which makes her just sigh and say, "You need to let it go, Bell." And he knows he does, because those kids might have ended up not getting floated right away, but plenty did when they turned eighteen. And it never went much better for their families.

"Which doesn't even make sense," he tells his sister. He's ten and she's fourteen, even more irritable than usual, sullen and moody all the time, doing her best to humor him when all she wants to do is sleep, from what he can tell. "Do you think they're really doing the calculations right?"

She's scowling at her homework, only half listening. "What calculations?"

"Everyone can only have one kid because of overpopulation. But we need to have enough people when we go back to Earth, right? Genetic diversity. Do you think they accurately predicted how many people would get floated? Or die before reproducing? Or--"

"They don't just have an extra slot you can take, Bell. And even if they did, Mom broke the law. If anyone ever found out about you, she'd die. Just like that."

"I know," he says, looking away. "I know."

And it's the truth, of course. Second children have survived being discovered, but their parents never survive having them. And it makes sense, from all sorts of points of view. His mother has already had children, and her job is non-essential. In a way, it doesn't make sense to waste resources on her anymore. That's what laws like the Ark's do; they make it easy to get rid of the poor and desperate once they stop being useful.

It's a society that's difficult to get excited about, but there's a tiny, idealistic part of him that thinks he could help. That he could do it better, if anyone listened to him. It doesn't have to be like _this_.

He's sixteen when they find him, but that doesn't bring him into Ark society, not really. He spends most of his time alone in a too-small room, instead of alone under the floor. He has classes with other kids, at least, but they don't have much time to talk. He gets roommates, from time to time, but they're always older than he is, and they're just around for a few weeks, and then they turn eighteen and they're gone. Most of the time, he doesn't even find out what happens to them. They disappear and don't come back, and he hopes they live, even the ones he doesn't like.

He hears when Jake Griffin gets floated. The news races around the sky box like an electric current, because Jake Griffin isn't the kind of person who gets floated. Bellamy's sure people like Jake Griffin commit crimes all the time, but they never get floated for it if anyone can help it. And no one knows _why_ he was floated, what crime he committed, and that makes it weirder. He wasn't involved in a public scandal; there wasn't any demand for his death.

A week later, Clarke Griffin gets put in solitary.

"So, that's really fucked up, right?" Bellamy asks.

His current roommate is Nathan Miller, who is apparently a guard's son. He's a month younger than Bellamy, which means Bellamy won't know what happens to him either. But he thinks he'll be pardoned.

He hopes he will. He likes Miller. He'd like for one of them to survive this.

"Which part?" asks Miller. "The whole thing's fucked up."

"Yeah," he agrees. "But not like this."

Miller stretches out on the bunk, eyes sliding shut. "I don't know what to tell you. Clarke seemed pretty weird, the last time I saw her, but--I don't know. Like half the kids who are in here, it's because their parents got floated. They get pissed and fight back. I don't blame them."

It's true, and it scares him sometimes. He remembers his sister's face when he was found, the broken-open expression of horror and guilt. His mother would be floated next, and he hopes she didn't do anything reckless in her grief.

Someone would have told him, right? It's been almost two years. They would have said, if his sister was floated. She's alive out there, somewhere. She has to be.

"Still. People like Jake and Clarke Griffin don't just get punished like the rest of us."

"I'm getting punished."

"You're eighteen in a month and a half," Bellamy shoots back. "They're trying to scare you."

"For a guy who grew up under the floor, you sure know a lot about this."

He shrugs. "I had plenty of time to read."

"Of course you did." He flops back on his bunk. "Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter, right?"

"No," Bellamy agrees, and tries to mean it. But it's just so much better to think about than any of his other options. Better to think about than whether or not his sister is alive, if he'll get to see her before they float him. If he can survive his birthday.

Every day, the weight in his stomach gets heavier. He has arguments, about why they should let him live, good ones. It's just that he doubts any of them matter. Whatever decision they've made about him, they made it already. It's not about him. It's about numbers and resources, and if they're floating someone like Jake Griffin, they're probably going to float him too.

He never sleeps that well, never has, but it's even worse on his birthday. He's restless and nervous, nearly throws up, and finally just gives up entirely. He lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, just trying to breathe. Which--he's not going to be able to soon, right? He should enjoy it while he can.

The sound of breakfast is what finally drags him out of bed, and when he gets up, he sees Miller already sitting on the floor, waiting for him.

"Happy birthday," he offers, with half a smile.

Bellamy snorts. "Yeah. Thanks." He pokes his meal. "I thought this sucked from the other side."

"Wouldn't be the sky box if every day wasn't a new kind of shitty."

"Yeah, thanks. You're always a ray of sunshine, Miller."

They play cards, waiting for Miller to get taken to class. Bellamy, of course, doesn't have to go to class today. It's like the weirdest present ever-- _you might die, take the day off_ \--and he thinks it doesn't really work how they want it to. The last thing he wants is to be alone with his thoughts right now.

When the door opens, it's too early for either of them to be taken, and Bellamy feels tension race up his body. Maybe they're getting it out of the way early. Maybe there are two birthdays, or three, so they have to take him now, so they'll have time to get to everyone. He's a Blake; he'd probably be first, alphabetically.

"Dad?" asks Miller, on a breath, and the guard crushes him in a hug.

"Nate."

It actually makes him smile a little. If anyone's going to take him away to die, at least it's Miller's dad. At least he gets to see something nice first.

But then the man pulls back, looks at both of them, nods once. "You two need to come with me."

Miller's eyes widen, and Bellamy nearly laughs, even though it's not funny at all. "Holy shit, are you breaking us out?"

"No." His throat bobs as he swallows. "We're sending you to the ground."

And Bellamy's mind goes blank.

*

The first thing that strikes him is the sheer _openness_ of it all. There are no walls, no ceilings. There are trees, but--he can see _forever_. He could walk for days and days and not run out of places to go. If he started running, he could just keep going. No one would stop him. Nothing would.

But he doesn't have anywhere to go. At least here he has people here. No one he knows well except Miller, but Miller is a good start. And it's not like he dislikes most of the other kids. Not enough to run away with no idea of where to go.

It's just he's never had the option of going _anywhere_ before. It's so much freedom he can barely understand it.

So when Clarke Griffin says they're on the wrong mountain, he asks, "Where's the right one?"

She glances up at him, studying him with curiosity. Bellamy doesn't really know what people see, when they look at him, but it makes him anxious thinking about it. He's still not used to interacting with more than one or two people at a time, and something about Clarke makes it feel like everyone is staring at him, even when no one else is paying any attention. She just--she's got a lot of attention for one person.

"It's here," she says, pointing to a spot on the map.

"Okay, and where are we?"

"Judging from the terrain? Here. And we're not going to survive," she adds. "Not without the food in that shelter."

"It might not have survived," he points out. 

"Did you have a better idea?"

"I might, yeah."

She looks him over again, contemplative. "I don't know you," she says, and he wonders what it's like, to expect to know people. "What's your name?"

"Bellamy."

"Bellamy Blake," Miller says, draping his arm over Bellamy's shoulder. "My roommate. The one they found under the floor. Hey, Clarke."

Clarke's mouth twitches into a small smile. "Hey, Miller. I forgot you were in the sky box."

"What, you didn't miss me?"

Just like that, the smile's gone again. "I've been a little busy."

Miller sobers too. "Sorry about your dad."

"It's not my dad I'm worried about. We need to get these people to Mount Weather. Even if there isn't food there," she adds, nodding to Bellamy, "there's shelter. There's nothing here."

"There's the ship," Bellamy counters. "I'm not saying you're wrong," he adds. "I'm saying it doesn't make sense for everyone to go. We should check it out before we drag a hundred kids through the woods."

"Ninety-eight," says Clarke, eyes flicking to the dropship. "Two died before we even made it to the ground."

"All the more reason to keep the rest alive, right?" he asks, and she thinks it over, nods, even smiles a little.

"You might be right. So, are you coming?"

*

Miller joins them, and some kids Bellamy vaguely recognizes from the sky box, Monty and Jasper, who are always whispering and shoving each other, and Harper and Monroe, who mostly seem to want to be away from the ship. Which, Bellamy has to admit, is already getting kind of out-of-hand already. Sending a hundred delinquents to take care of themselves on the ground seems like about the worst idea in the history of the world, but he guesses they don't really care, if a bunch of poor kids die.

He was supposed to die today anyway, after all. And now he's on Earth, breathing clean air.

Miller nudges his shoulder. "You're grinning."

"I'm _alive_."

"You really think they were gonna float you?" he asks, and Bellamy shrugs.

"I wasn't even supposed to be born. Why would they start keeping me alive now?"

Clarke glances over her shoulder, brows furrowed. "When were they going to float you?"

It feels weird to say. "Uh, today. It's my eighteenth birthday."

"Happy birthday," she says, and he lets out a surprised laugh.

"Thanks. It's one hell of a present." He glances at Miller, but Miller's fallen back into step with Monty and Jasper, so Bellamy takes a few long strides to fall into step with Clarke instead. He knows the bare bones of her life: her mother is a doctor, her father is an engineer. Her family is close to the Jahas, but Wells is down here too--and that must have happened _yesterday_ , or he and Miller would have heard--and Clarke isn't giving him the time of day. So--he's curious. He's been thinking about her a lot, these last few weeks.

"Is this why your dad got floated?" he asks.

Her jaw works, and he can see the tension everywhere in her body. He'd feel bad, except he doesn't. Everyone knows why his mom got floated. Everyone knows everything about him. If they don't, it's just because they forgot. His entire life was a scandal. She can deal with one question.

"Is what?" she finally asks.

"This plan to send us to the ground. Did he find out and they had to float him?"

The sound she makes isn't quite a laugh, but it's related. In the same genus as a laugh. "Close," she says. She worries her lip, like she's trying to decide if she trusts him.

"Who am I gonna tell, Clarke?" he asks, gentle. "They already floated us."

"The Ark is dying," she says, and his stomach plummets.

"Dying?"

"Why do you think they sent us down here?" She bites her lip. "They're running out of air. The Ark can't survive unless they fix it, and they need time to fix it. Getting rid of a hundred kids helps, but they're going to need to do more. And fast."

"And they floated their head engineer," he says.

Clarke's mouth twitches. "And they floated their head engineer."

"He told you?"

"So they locked me up."

"They locked me up for being born," he points out. "But I guess I wasn't in the oxygen budget, so I'm part of the problem."

The twitch upgrades into half a smile. "Yeah, it's definitely your fault."

"No wonder they were going to float me." He clears his throat. "So, what can we do? How do we get them down?"

She looks a little surprised, but she reaches over and taps his wristband. "These are a good start. Even if we can't talk to the Ark, they're monitoring our vital signs. So they'll know we're alive. And if we can figure out how to talk to them--they can come down."

"Everyone?" he asks.

"What do you mean?"

"Historically speaking, if there's a problem with big ships, it's that there aren't enough life boats for everyone. So what does the Ark dying look like? Are they going to get everyone to the ground, or just leave a bunch of people up there with failing life support who don't have the skills to fix it?"

To her credit, she doesn't answer right away. He can see her considering it, trying to make up her mind. "I honestly don't know," she finally says. "We were never supposed to come down this early. The population we were sending to Earth would have been smaller, so--I don't know how many ships they have, or how they'd be planning to come down."

"Thanks for being honest." He pauses. "Do you know if my sister is alive?"

"Your sister?" she asks, sounding blank, and then she remembers. "Right. You have a sister."

"That's the basic problem with my entire life, yeah. Octavia Blake. Do you know if she--I was always worried she'd do something to get floated and no one would tell me."

Almost everyone else he'd ever asked, they just said _I don't know_ , which had been about what he'd expected. Floating wasn't so common, but he knew it was easy to not pay attention to. He didn't have anything else to do, so he read things like that, but his mother and his sister hadn't ever cared, unless it was a terrible crime or a person they knew.

But Clarke seems to be thinking it over, reviewing all the names she knows of people who have been floated, trying really hard to remember.

"I don't think she was floated," she says,slow. "Her name is familiar, but I think it's just because of you. Your mother was Aurora, right?"

"Yeah."

She nods, mostly to herself. "I think she's alive, Bellamy. I think I'd remember if she was floated."

He lets out a long, jagged breath. "Okay," he says. "Okay." He wets his lips. "So--how do I get her down here?"

"That's what I'm working on," says Clarke, and he smiles. 

"Let me know how I can help."

He really believes her when she says, "I will."

*

They make something like camp in a clearing in the woods. Monty's good with plants and seems to know what's safe to eat, given he's been plucking things off of bushes they pass and putting them in his mouth without dying, so Bellamy eats the meal he finds for them without complaint. It's not a lot of food, but he's never had a lot of food. Even in the sky box, they never got that much, and his roommates would complain about the decreased rations.

It was an increase for him, but he never mentioned that.

What does give him trouble is sleeping. Not that that's new. It doesn't take him long to drift off the first time, but he wakes up at some point and finds himself terrified and disoriented, heart racing at the sight of so much _air_.

He rubs his face, trying to get his breathing under control. It's so fucking _unfair_. He was terrified of being boxed in when he was a kid, and now he's terrified of being in the open. He doesn't _want_ to be locked up in a hole again, just the idea is enough to set his heart racing harder, but--some walls would be nice. _Something_.

"Fuck," he mutters. He's just never going to belong anywhere. He didn't belong on the Ark, and he doesn't belong on Earth. This is what happens, when people aren't supposed to exist in the first place.

"Bellamy?"

He turns, guilty, to see Clarke, but it doesn't look like she was sleeping either. Her smile is soft and a little concerned, and he returns it sheepishly.

"Sorry, I didn't think anyone was going to notice that."

"Are you okay?"

"It doesn't bother you?" 

"What doesn't?"

"Being in the open like this. It's just--I'm used to walls."

"Oh. I don't know. I guess I didn't notice."

He turns onto his side so he can focus on her. He's not doing anything else. "So why can't you sleep?"

"Too much to think about."

"I get the impression that's not a new thing for you."

Her laugh is soft, and it feels a little strange. He's never talked to girls much, aside from his sister. All of his roommates were other boys, and plenty of them had been attractive. The one before Miller had even wanted to kiss him, and Bellamy hadn't minded. It was nice, being so close. He wouldn't have minded doing it more.

And he wouldn't mind doing it now, looking at Clarke, soft and pretty in the strange blue light of the biolumiescent forest. It's new and a little overwhelming, but--not bad.

"No, it's not. Not for you either," she says, not quite a question.

"If I didn't think about something else, I just thought about my life. So--yeah. I thought about anything else I could. And there's a lot to think about."

"Like what?"

The real answers don't feel like they'll help, so he says, "My mom used to tell us stories about Greek and Roman mythology. Aurora was the Roman goddess of the dawn, so I guess she liked them. I'd think about those a lot."

Clarke shifts closer. "Any good ones?"

"Yeah, a few," he says, and they fall asleep like that, him talking about goddesses who made the wrong wishes and her smiling as she listens, and he doesn't wake up again until morning.

*

The sleeping thing doesn't get better. His best nights are the ones where he's too busy to even think about sleeping, because then, at least, he's not worrying about he's not. And he has plenty of things to keep him awake, between the existence of grounders and Jasper nearly getting killed by them, and Murphy trying to convince all the kids to follow him instead of listening to Clarke, acid fog and mutant animals and trying to figure out how to get in touch with the Ark. He has way too many things to do, honestly.

But after a week on the ground, he's running on probably about thirty hours of sleep since they hit the ground, which he knows isn't enough. 

Clarke is the one to call him out on it, when he drifts off sitting in the dropship while he waits for a hunting party to get in touch.

"There's this new invention called a _bed_ ," she teases.

He yawns and looks down at her. She looks about as exhausted as he feels, dark circles under her eyes and not quite sitting up straight. "Since when do we have beds? Don't tell me you've been holding out on me."

"Okay, there are sleeping bags," she corrects. "There's a flat surface where you could be lying down and getting some real rest."

"You're one to talk. When's the last time you laid down and slept?"

"I'm busy."

"We're all busy, Clarke. You need sleep as much as I do."

"Is it better?" she asks. "Sleeping in the tent."

"Yeah. Or the ship. Anywhere with walls." He laughs. "Fuck, I never thought I'd miss walls. You know I used to wake up with panic attacks that I couldn't get out of the floor? And now I'm waking up with panic accounts that I can't get back in." He lets his head fall back against the wall of the dropship. "I really just don't fit anywhere."

It feels stupid as soon as he's said it, and the way Clarke shifts just a little makes him regret it more. The last thing he wants to do is make her uncomfortable. She's--he's only known her for a week, and she's already so important to him. He almost can't believe it.

He scrubs his hand over his face. "Sorry, I really must be--"

But she pushes her shoulder against his, this warm, sudden burst of contact. "You do fit here, Bellamy. You belong with us."

He swallows hard, fumbles for something to say. Because this is what he wanted, isn't it? Not exactly, not the details, but--he's a part of a society. Someone values his opinions, listens to him, appreciates what he has to offer. 

It's a lot to think about, and he's way too tired.

"You should get some sleep," he says, voice coming out gruff.

"You should too." A pause, and then she says, "You could come with me. Tell me a few more stories."

It sounds nice. It sounds so nice he feels guilty about it, thinking he could just lie down with a pretty girl and talk to her until they fall asleep, when so much else is going on. 

But he does need to sleep, and he's never slept better than he did when he was talking to her.

"Yeah?" he asks, mostly as a stall tactic, and he feels her moving next to him, standing up. When he opens his eyes, she's offering her hand, and he takes it and lets her pull him to his feet.

"Yeah," she says, with a soft smile. "We deserve some rest, right?"

"We do."

She doesn't let go of his hand as she leads him to her tent, and he lets himself think she's right. This, right here, this is what he's been waiting for, his whole life. Not to get out of the floor, not to get out of the sky box, to be on the Ark or on Earth, just--this. Clarke Griffin's hand in his, the two of them taking a few hours to themselves to sleep before they're back to figuring out what to do.

This is exactly where he's meant to be.


End file.
